The Fifth Year

Zine
Title:	The Fifth Year
Publisher:	Fandom House Publications/Star Trekken (out of Valrico, Florida)
Editor:
Author(s):	Cynthia Broadwater
Cover Artist(s):	Cosmo
Illustrator(s):
Date(s):	April 1983
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:
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front cover, the artist is "Cosmo"

back cover, an ad for the author's next zine The Final Farewell

a flyer

The Fifth Year is a 20-page (about 10,000 words, reduced) gen Star Trek: TOS novel by Cynthia Broadwater. On the cover: "War on Vulcan?"

Summary

From an ad in Universal Translator #24: "The unexpected has happened. war has broken out on Vulcan, and the Enterprise is sent to investigate. This is the last mission of the the TV crew and explains the missing pieces between the series and ST:TMP."

From the Editorial

September 8, 1966 Cynthia Broadwater sat in front of the television watching the new science fiction show. Star Trek. She didn't like it. The episode The Man Trap seemed to be another bug eyed monster television rip off science fiction series. One thing caught her attention though, the strange man, the one with the pointed ears. It seemed he had no friends, the woman on the bridge said the closest thing to a friend he had was the Captain. It seemed an awfully big ship to have no friends on, so Intrigued Cynthia watched the next broadcast, Charlie X. Unknown to her she was being drawn into Star Trek addiction, from which she has never recovered.

[snipped]

If the network had ended Star Trek as they did Barney Miller or M*A*S*H the script might have been very similar to THE FIFTH YEAR. The final mission of Captain Kirk.

Reactions and Reviews

There's something intimately cozy about this digest-sized zine with its clear mimeo print and no wasted space. Set at the end of the five-year mission, THE FIFTH YEAR seeks to integrate the series with the films, especially the first one, by offering an explanation of the events leading up to Spock's decision to retreat into Kolinahr. The story suffers from general sketchiness and lack of flesh, but it's a very innovative story with ideas usually found only in genuine science fiction. It would make a great episode, or even a film, if it were expanded. Braodwater should consider adding more meat to it and publishing it pro. A sequel is planned. The premise hangs on what we learned in the episode "All Our Yesterdays," in which Spock suddenly reverts to the savagery of his ancestors because he's stepped back into a time when Vulcan had no rules of logic. Most fans, myself included, dismissed that as just silly, but Broadwater uses it in an interesting way. Given Spock's discovery on Sarpeidon, how would other Vulcans react to his findings? When he publishes a paper on the subject, several orthodox Vulcans become indignant and, in order to prove him wrong, invent a machine to duplicate the conditions that he experienced on Sarpeidon. Predictably, all hell breaks loose. The era of savagery returns, and all of Vulcan is at war, cutting itself off from the UFP and imprisoning all non-Vulcans. Unfortunately, Broadwater doesn't really give us a clear idea of just what sort of machine could affect a Vulcan's psyche so deeply. As I said, the story needs a lot more depth in places. The Enterprise is sent to investigate, and Spock poses as a patriot, claiming to have captured the ship. However, Kirk and McCoy are imprisoned and Spock is forced to witness this. A rather large hole is overlooked here. Since off-world Vulcans have no idea of what has transpired on their planet, the new Vulcan tyrant leaders should immediately see through Spock's ruse. Do their new emotions suddenly drain off their intelligence? Another rather glaring omission is the absence of a scene with the inventors of the machine after the conflicts have been solved. Some truly powerful scenes, however, succeeds in making the story more than just another unfulfilled fan outline. When Spock enters the prison camp and sees what has been done to his mother (a particularly gruesome fate) and, in a rage, he subsequently lunges at the new leader, we fully believe his reaction and see it clearly. But the most interesting idea is that Spock is better at controlling the effects of the machine than are full Vuleans. It is this ability which leads him to decide to attain Kolinahr. Because the planet has been devastated, and a severe 'crisis in philosophy' has occurred, the people are demoralized. They need a symbol to pick themselves up again. Spock reasons that if he, a half-Vulcan, can attain Kolinahr, then his people will have hope. A noble and persuasive idea, but I have always seen the Vulcans as a highly self-sufficient people. I'm not sure why they would need such a grandstand play. Still, it has its own internal logic and with more exploration of all the nuances of the problem, it would have been even more convincing. Broadwater has a good, economical style (too much so at times) and she obviously possesses a fine imagination. Let's hope that she writes more, in-depth, work.